6th Grade

Hey MHMS Kids! It’s MHTV Application Time! Pick one up in the Cafeteria at lunch (see above) return it to Media (there will be a box on a chair) OR…..be super cool & fill out the GSuite Doc Application below! (HINT: Use your password from last year!) We’d love to have you join us — esp. 6th graders!

Fall at Savage is packed full of free practice tests for SAT, ACT and PSAT, as well as numerous other awesome classes and events such as as teen movies with popcorn, tie dye, college and career readiness workshops, sparkle glitter jars, financial literacy, intro to sign language, a writing workshop with published teen author Zack Smedley, canvas and cookies painting party, suicide prevention, rainbow book meet up, theater preview of HHS fall play, anime club and a new interactive 4H series featuring STEM jobs — please share with your students and teachers ❤️

Welcome Back Kiddos, Parents, & Families!

I am SO honored to have been a part of this community since the beginning. I never thought I was one of those teachers who would stay in the same school for like, forever!

But here I am, still happy, loving our quirky middle school kiddos and the vibrant and rich diversity of our amazing neighborhood! I also like that I live near our community and only have to drive 7 minutes to get here!

This year is going to be fantastic and challenging! I’m so happy that Ms. Bell, our amazing Media Assistant is with us full time! Thanks to our new FULL TIME AWESOME Superintendent, Michael J. Martirano for bringing back our much needed (and loved!) Library paraeducators a couple years ago. We really appreciate having our Library & Literacy program fully staffed – because we serve about 800 people! 730+ kiddos & 80+ teachers and staff!

I will try and share all the amazing things that happen every day here at MHMS – the cool kiddos, the fun times, the Science, the ELA, the Social Studies, MHTV, ART, STEAM, Drama, well – as much as I can!

We LOVE to share the cool things that happen every day here at MHMS! In the Library, in the hallways, everywhere!

Where does the time fly? I can’t believe it’s that time of year again! Time to share our Summer Reading List with you! It’s my 27th year in HCPSS and 22nd year here at Murray Hill Middle School! W00t! A lot of things have changed but some thing stay the same. Like still LOVING to read. Every day. Especially, in the Summer time! There’s nothing better to sit outside, on the beach, under an umbrella, or in a screened in porch and just read. For hours and hours! Where do you like to read? Any verified official Murray Hill kid who answers that in the comments will get a surprise next year! Sorry, Svetlana in Vladivostok, you are not eligible to win, but I still appreciate you reading this blog!

…..also, Pssst! Grownups! The ADULT Summer Reading List is linked at the bottom.

Thanks to our our A+ partner Librarians at the Howard County Library and two of our local HCPSS Middle School Teacher-Librarians we have created this Super Fun Reading List for all the kiddos in our district! (or the world!)

Murray Hill kids – If you read any of these books this summer, we would LOVE to hear what you thought in the comments! Follow us on Instagram to see pics of kids being AWESOME every day in our library and throughout the school!

Also, if you take a picture of yourself reading this summer or visiting a Library & tag me at @TheDaringLibrarian you’ll get a prize! Also, please tag @HoCoLibrary to maybe get some extra SWAG! 😉 But you have to find me in September and remind me, by saying like “Swag Me” because I’m getting old! LOL

From the Howard County Public Library, Our A+ Partners

Welcome to Summer Reading: A Universe of Stories

Join us for Summer Reading KICKOFF on Saturday, June 1 from 10 am to 2 pm at HCLS Miller Branch!

Activities in the Enchanted Garden include planting a sunflower and being a human sundial (weather permitting)

Indoor activities include crafts for children, and encounters with moon rocks and other rocks from space borrowed from NASA

Food trucks: Kona Ice and Say Cheese!

11 – 11:45 pm performance by The Milkshake Duo

12:30 – 1:30 pm fun with Eric Energy

ENROLL in Summer Reading Beginning June 1, 2019

Children, teens, and adults can participate! Enroll online from home or at any HCLS branch OR pick up a paper booklet at any branch.

After you’ve enrolled online or picked up your Summer Reading booklet, log the books you read and mark off activities as you complete them.

For every book/activity you complete, you receive an entry into a branch and systemwide prize drawing for your age group.

FOR ONLINE PARTICIPANTS: HCLS has a new online summer reading portal called BookPoints! Beginning June 1, 2019 you can register for a free summer reading account and create your BookPoints Username and password. Earn up to 41 entries into end-of-summer prize drawings by participating online!

FOR PAPER ONLY PARTICIPANTS: Between July 1 and August 31, return your completed booklet to any library branch to receive one entry into the end-of-summer prize drawings for each book or activity you complete. Check off a minimum of 20 books and/or activities to officially complete Summer Reading 2019: A Universe of Stories!

Short Story: A wonderful 6th grade student & I teamed up and made this bookmark sheet and I want to share it with you.

I made copies and gave several to the creative young kid. Then, a few days later, one of my marvelous teachers Mrs. Granger, had her kids, including the boy who helped create the Ninja Unicorn, color it and we’re going to laminate it. I took a picture and was just amazed. My not so adroit drawings and rather amateurish lettering were brought to life and made to look better by the amazing coloring of the kiddos.

Why not ask some of your kids to come up with their own coloring bookmarks? If you do, please share them with me and I will share them with my kids. Maybe we could trade them!?

JG – the creator of the NINJA Unicorn, is the cute kid in the middle! The other two gents are some of my 6h grade regular LEGO & UNO players during recess!

Longer Story: This coloring sheet came about by mistake. It came about because I’m kind of a doofus.

We were madly getting
ready for MAP testing deadlines (going through each and every laptop) and
also worrying over so many snow related school delays, that I forgot to sign up for a pot-luck breakfast for our district
Library Media Professional Development day.

This is a story about Sister Libraries, Twitter, Google+ Hangout, and connecting kids! It all started with a Tweet by my dear friend & Tweep Tiffany Whitehead aka The Mighty Little Librarian and her awesome BFF EL teacher Alaina Laperouse both of Central Middle School in Baton Rouge Louisiana! She had been inspired by a Tweet she had seen about sister classrooms started between @heisereads and @brianwyzlic– you know, like sister cities?She said she wanted a sister library & I was like I’m willing!! After a few Tweets back and forth a bit to establish time zones (because I’m an idiot when it comes to time zones!) we finally got our kiddos to meet and chat using Google+ Hangout! I’ve connected with classrooms before using Google Hangout before & blogged about it – but this was different, this was establishing a steady school partnership!

Our first chat happened in Kristin Cullison’s classroom with her 6th grade research seminar class (and my media helpers!). Tiff’s kids didn’t know where we were from so they asked my kids questions to discover our location – after a few clues (including steamed crabs and the Chesapeake Bay!) her kiddos correctly guessed Maryland! I shared that one of our favourite books was Weird Maryland and her kids said that they loved the book Weird Louisiana! It was a super fun moment of a shared love of urban legends where the kids each held up the respective books to show each other live & It was a magic moment! To celebrate this, the next day I sent them the Maryland book! LOVE Amazon Prime! (See pic below from Tiff) My kids were so impressed with the lovely behaviour & charming Louisiana accents of the CMS kiddos & were urging to connect again!

Our latest chat happened in our respective school libraries with the kiddos trading prepared book talks! Great for summer reading!

To extend this relationship for next year I’m thinking of having our kiddos both join United Classrooms where they can chat back & forth and have moderated discussions. Maybe share those urban legend stories and collaboratively create an urban legend wiki or group on Edmodo, or perhaps start a semi-virtual book club! A cool idea I haven’t tried yet is we could create a chat room for the event with Today’s Meet and using a second laptop or computer joining in the Hangout – sharing screen, you can have a moderated chat going on at the same time!

Teachers & Librarians: If you’re interested in trying this out there is a Google+ Community for connecting Google classroom Hangouts! You can also check out the website Google Education OnAirto join in scheduled LIVE Google Hangouts, connect with other interested educators or get tech help to get started! The Twitter hashtag #eduonairconnects educators with other classrooms creating conversations & relationships.

Tiff was moderating our conversation with her official Harry Potter wand! We are both ardent Harry Potter fans, so I have to share this amazing video below of Tiff – the Mighty Little Librarian getting her own wand! It’s magical if you’re an HP fan! My eyes got a little leaky about halfway through! [snif!]